I didn't go to protest action, but I came to the idea that I will write today to my blog and make my fight like that. Even though I'm small time artist and haven't really earned much anything with my art, I have my art up in internet on many sites, and therefore it is vulnerable for theft... but I don't care, I'm still against such laws as ACTA. What ACTA really is? It is yet another control mechanism and a censorship. Ask yourself for whom it should be. Answer is that such thing should protect the interests of authors. Yet you can see that many authors themselves are against that law. It is not for us. To whom it really is, is politicians and especially companies. Authors lose only some money because of piracy, yet the same piracy greatly expands the opportunities for most of the authors to be known in the first place. As long as piracy of creative property has existed, it really has only been useful for artists. Piracy has broadened the field of art and only created more artists. Some copying artists have even made the original artist more famous and selling than he/she ever was before. I would let anyone steal my art from internet rather than have ACTA like laws. The ones who earn from it are companies and maybe few very mainstream artists. And ACTA also creates legal right for more control for those who already have too much control over others. We need freedom. greatest need for artist is a freedom. Therefore you can easily say that such laws are just making world more uniform or limited. Is money really what artist wants. NO! I have only small money now, but what really is my greatest wish all the time, is the opportunity to share my creation and mainly to get something for it in the same form - art against art. Sure, I would want money too, but I have accepted that for getting real money I should do some different kind of work. Right now we still have possibility to get music and movies created by small artists and producers from other sides of the world. I don't mean USA but much more remote places where really cool things are done. How can you get such things when laws close down all unconventional and "illegal" sources. I wouldn't even know half of the artists I know now, if internet would be more controlled.
In Sweden internet piracy was registered as a belief, and I really see why. Some people really believe that nowdays it is only possible solution to have a world where money and power aren't most important, and the lifestyle that saves us from damned global homogenizing of culture and art going under big business. I think all people say that without music and art life would be depressing, but hell, I would be depressed if only music I could reach and/or afford, would be some mainstream pop-things. Already in 80-s and 90-s it was said that tape recording music from radio will be the death blow to music. What actually happened was, that the greater market, greater choice of different creation and soon also easier ways to get anything came to be. MBasically more culture and cheaper culture. You want to know the truth - without pirated or otherways not quite legal music, we would lose very many of good parties. And artists would lose lots of inspirational material to make some of their own good creative material. Probably entire next generation would be much less creative. And still today they say the same. Piracy kills creativity. No, piracy is bad only to big producers and big names. What kills creativity is exactly the opposite of piracy - making laws that allow only big companies and selected few artists to flourish. You know what would be good solution against piracy and intellectual theft? Lots of small producers who take small artists to produce their music, films, games, books, etc; lots of small shops that take things to sell from all kinds of artists and producers with smaller quantities and smaller prices. Maybe profits would be little bit smaller, but actually I believe that twice smaller prices would bring much more clients. And make really all kinds of different things from different parts of the world available in internet shops to be downloaded. But it is pretty impossible - which salesman cares to search for some artists in African slums or Mesoamerican small town. And therefore I believe that nothing replaces piracy as a mode to share from person to person, so that wherever you are in a world, you may get some movie made in Lebanon or Nigerian dancemusic or traditional music from South-China, or painting from some artist of some small town in Brazil. This is simply what people need. So what if 100 people seeing my art in internet just copy it to their hardrive, but when my art travels enough that way, then probably 101st person asks me if he/she can really buy some original work.
And ACTA isn't only just against piracy. It is good ground for all kinds of limits. It is good ground for censorship and internet espionage. Basically when right now I can quote anyone in my blog, then ACTA creates possibility that such use of someone else's text is theft without permission. I understand, for politicians it is good way to control free journalism. Or another possible problem for anyone having their own independent internet site - if right now I don't have to care where some link that has been added to my blog either by myself or someone else, may lead, then after some such harsh laws, I may be criminal if anything from my site leads to illegal internet pages. And actually I can't even do much if someone would put a link to my chatbox. Only way to remove someone else's post from there, would be to delete all entries or even remove the chatbox. I would rather live in "communist" China. And really, as I have already wrote in my earlier blog entries, one reason why I want to leave Europe and go back to Kenya, is our lack of freedom. It is such a lie that we live in most democratic and free areas in the world.
